In general, a reciprocating type electric shaver includes a main body; an outer blade cassette connected with an upper portion of the main body; a net-shaped outer blade disposed at an upper portion of the outer blade cassette; and an inner blade member sliding reciprocally over an inner side of the outer blade, the inner blade being driven while being connected with the main body. Hair (beard) introduced through apertures of the outer blade is cut by reciprocal motion of blades of the inner blade member over the apertures of the outer blade (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-open Application No. 2004-16520).
A conventional inner blade member 4′ is formed with a blade plate 10 and a blade holder 11. Pair of holding members 21, which are provided at the blade holder 11 in longitudinally defined end regions D2, are fixed as a unit with the blade plate 10 in longitudinally defined end regions D2. Provided at the blade holder 11 in a longitudinally defined center region D1 are connection portions 5 to which driving units 7 protruded from the main body 1 are detachably attached.
Typically, conventional connection portions 5 are configured to be tightly inserted to the driving units 7, providing no easy separation therefrom. Accordingly, when dissembling the inner blade member 4′ for cleaning, finger holders 22 provided at the blade holder 11 in the longitudinally defined end regions D2 are held by fingers and need to be pulled strongly toward a direction A away and from the driving units 7. Since the blade holder 11 in the longitudinally defined center region D1 is loose from the blade plate 11 and is provided with the connection portions 5 that are not easily separable from the driving units 7, a tensile load B between the connection portions 5 and the driving units 7 (engaging force between the connection portions 5 and the driving units 7) causes the blade holder 11 in the longitudinally defined center region D1 to deform in a direction away from the blade plate 10 and also puts stress on the connection portions 5. When repetitively assembling and dissembling the connection portions 5, the connection of the connection portions 5 and the driving units 7 becomes loose and unstable, thereby failing to prevent the connection portions 5 from being easily detached off from the driving units 7. In particular, when a load on a motor of the driving units 7 is reduced by decreasing the weight of the inner blade member 4 or when a height of the blade plate 10 is scaled down to reduce the size of blades, the blade holder 11, which may be made of plastic, is suffered from being not rigid enough to overcome repetitive assembling/dissembling. Accordingly, the blade holder 11 in the longitudinally defined center region D1 becomes vertically too bendable when assembling/dissembling the connection portions 5 to/from the driving units 7. As a result, attachability and detachability become unreliable, thereby making it difficult to assemble/dissemble the connection portions 5 to/from the driving units 7.